I'm sold on the healer. No question about it. I'm 95% sure Paladin is the right choice right now. I'll do more when I'm not exhausted.
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I'm sold on the healer. No question about it. I'm 95% sure Paladin is the right choice right now. I'll do more when I'm not exhausted.
The team had no trouble dropping people.
So proof of concept, or whatever you call it, it is there.
The trouble was, being dropped so quickly.
But that is a gearing issue.
And even with the lack of gear, the team could drop others fast.
So with good gear, not only does survivability go up so does the kill power.
I would want a 5th on the team, and for that 5th to be the healer.
Not sold on Paladin, although it looks to be a very good choice.
My preference would be:
a) Run 4x DK's and have a healer friend;
b) Run 4x DK's and play the healer when that is not available, or when questing/doing PvE content.
Well, I've actually went back and forth a couple times with the Paladin and here are my general thoughts:
You fifth should be a healer. This allows you to do PvE content and allows you the option to drop your healer and sub in a friend while you play just the 4 DPS. This is easier than running 5 DPS and then randomly dropping one, I think. So now that we've established the optimum setup is 4 DK's plus healer, the question is which healer and why...
Your options are Druid, Pally, Shaman, Priest. I will rate them as I see them as adding to the team:
Offensive Buffs: Paladin, Shaman, Druid, Priest. Paladin offers Blessing which is just plain hot. Shaman have totems but some Strength of Earth overlaps with Horn of Winter. Druids and Priests are almost negligible here.
Defensive Buffs: Paladin, Shaman, Priest, Druid. Paladin offers Blessing plus aura which confers 200 resist to everything. Shaman offers Tremor Totem, which I count as less than 200 resist because you have trinket, Cleanse and Lichborne for fears. Priest have Fort. Druids are negligible here imo~.
Single Healing: Shaman, Priest, Paladin, Druid. I think Shaman single target output with Earth Shield, their hots, etc are insane. Priests are equal to them in my eyes--They have tons of different ways of healing and preventing damage to a single target. Paladin throughput while you're clickied is insane too. Druids take hind teat here again imo~. With the nerfs to HoTs they're just not what they used to be.
AoE Healing: Priest, Shaman, Druid, Paladin. I think Priest wins this one hands down, with Shaman being a not-so-near second. Druids are decent with Paladins being somewhat terrible at this still.
Survivability: Paladin, Shaman, Priest, Druid. I guess this is why I'm using the Paladin now--Knowing I can bubble every other encounter in BG's makes me feel invincible. It makes my healer a terrible target and if they do come after me I can just bubble and keep on raping. Plus they're in plate with a shield. Shaman is a close second for me--They are in mail with a shield... Sadly they don't have bubble :) Priests are a little worse than Shaman to me with Druids being terrible in this regard. Yeah, you can go bear form but then you're not healing.
In light of all this, I've come to realize that Shaman are probably a better primary healer. You've got totems for fear protection, resists, spell protection and buffs. You've got the second best survivability. Good throughput. Great single target and AE healing.
Hmmm. Sigh. I have two weeks to make a choice. Dammit lol. Anyways, can we do further discussion on this?
The healer discussion is an interesting one. Here are my thoughts. If I ever wanted to run this comp, I'd have all healer types available, so I hope I'm not too biased for or against any class.
Priest: Probably not as durable as the rest. Good AoE healing tools, which is probably still important. AoE fear is pretty decent, and I think you've overlooked that.
Pally: The bubble advantage is huge, provided you take care of the classes that can bust it. I think the thing that's nice about it is you can buy a lot of time with the bubble. Good players will switch off of your healer when they see this, and they're probably not going to pick the same DK to focus during the duration. Buff is good, healing pretty good, survivability is probably most important. Pally-centered AoE heal will be interesting, should you choose to intermingle with your team.
Druid: I agree with your points. I think you overlook the ability to use stealth, however. I'd keep my druid healer stealthed at all times and pop him out only as needed. Thorns might have some utility, too.
Shaman: Tremor would be a huge help, despite your other defenses. Bloodlust is also nice... Chain heal is made for this group, and earth shield on yourself plus good healing tools (and mail/shield) will make you somewhat robust.
Overall, you make some great points for the comp... I have two main overriding concerns:
* The power of the comp centers on a new re-work of a class and a few key abilities (esp. howling blast). Blizzard could retool frost DK in several minor ways that neuters the effectiveness of the team. Contrast this with Elemental Shamans, where the changes were incremental, pretty balanced, and we've seen almost no tweaking of the comp for many, many PTR patches. Knowing my luck, I'd roll up some DKs to pair with my pally and get them to 85 just in time to have major changes go through...
* The team comp really shines with 5 people. I agree it would be better to have another player as the healer-- even so, you're taking up 5 slots of a 10v10 BG. Somewhere, your team is defending a node with 2 people instead of 3 as a result. This is a non-issue for Arena, admittedly. For competitive BG, this pretty much guarantees you take up 5 slots to support the 4 DPS. (Contrast that with Shaman, who can quadbox effectively with some decent survivability built-in.)
All that said, I have healers available and getting DKs leveled up is inherently easier than any other new team... It's tempting.
I think I'll let you (and others) show us how awesome it can be at 85 before I take the plunge!
I actually didn't see my inclusing in BG's WSG or AB as detrimental to the team once I got a grasp on the team in PvP.
The teams strategy has to take into consideration your presence. Generally in AB the first thing I would do was say "I am multi-boxing, the best strategy we can employ is 3 cap Farm, BS, LM and I will just sit between all 3 and go where the pressure is heaviest". That is the typical strategy, so more often than not that is exactly what we would do and we would win easy 3 or 4 caps. When the team I was on was not interested in defending at all we struggled. In WSG taking up 5 slots isn't be big deal imo. Your best position will be as a 4, flag escort and defense, or flag offense. Either way you are not taking too many slots up as a 4 man or 5 man team. I'd argue a 5 man DK squad on offense in WSG is going to be the ultimate sniper team to pop the flag runner and grab the flag back.
I appreciate the emphasis on Howling Blast, but I'm just not sold on it like some are. Yes, it's amazing. It's awesome. It pairs well with Necrotic Strike. That's great.
Even if it just did the same damage to a single target this team will be amazing. Absolutely amazing.
It isn't the AOE, it is the range. That is what makes HB insane. The AoE is superflous to the fact that it is ranged. The biggest difficulty you will run into with a melee team is keeping everyone on the target against above average players. It isn't easy with the way IWT works. The fact a big chunk of your DPS can be dealt at 30 yards is what makes HB insane and what makes the DKs as in my estimation what will be quite possibly the best PvP team at Cata launch.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mosg2
I thought the idea sounded great before I knew HB was ranged with no aoe cap. When I found that out I almost fell off my chair.
The amount of CC reduction,immunity,breaks you get as Frost just makes you a powerhouse.
ATM it is all theory I guess till we see how htings pan out at 85 - and its risky because this team would be very weak in Cata instances that seem to have alot of movement (ie all run away from the boss now) and I'm worried about a Blood DK Tank holding aggro off four AoE spamming frost DK's tbh.
But I have a Paladin who is Prot in my Shaman Team. I will be making him Holy - my DK's are only 62 - but more than anything Mosq I wanted to say thanks for your amzingly inspiring video I have never played a melee team before and I'm loving the 'blender' feel to it.
Keep up the discussion but lets hope we dont get Frost DK's heavily nerfed haha.
@Mercbeast:
Yes i totally agree--I just meant that people (imo~) overemphasize the damage of HB. It's not that as a single DK it's OP--It's that when you can do 8 of them from 30 yards away while you're running to a target in exactly 1 second it *seems* ridiculous.
@Everyone:
After writing about the different healers I've had a pretty big internal debate on whether Paladin or Shaman is the "most right" choice for a healer. I'm trying to separate the fact that I'm one faction away from The Insane on my team from my decision--I don't want my reluctance to restart rep grinding on a toon to decide which healer I play--That's what you all are here for :) So, without further ado:
I've discounted Druids and Priests. I think they'll work fine, I just don't think they're the best choice. They both lack in survivability--I want my healer to be a second-choice target if possible. If he is the first choice, I want him to have the survivability and healing throughput while being focused to survive. With that in mind, let me present the two healers as I see them.
Paladins are solid. They have the best survivability of any of the healers even without bubble. Adding bubble they become a very discouraging target--By prioritizing Priests and Warriors you're forcing the opposition into a no-win situation: They can target the Paladin, swap to a DK, then back to Paladin post-bubble or they can just ignore the Paladin. Neither of these are great options. My main concern with the Paladin is that (imo~) they have markedly weaker heals compared to Shaman.
Shaman are solid. They have the second best survivability as I see it. They wear mail and use a shield. They don't really have many defensive cooldowns though--It's more that they're just tough plus great healing.
In comparing the two it comes to this: Their non-healing, non-survivability utility is equal. Paladins have better general buffs (200 base resist, mounted speed increase, better damage buff) while Shaman offer really good burst DPS via Bloodlust and an extra layer of fear protection (huge). Basically, I'm saying that just looking at non-heals and non-survival stuff the choice between them is a wash. Imo~. That leads me to the two big topics then: Healing, and survivability.
Healing:
Plain and simple, I prefer the Shaman by a large margin for healing this team. ALL of the Paladin healing is reactive--The mastery shield you get is decent but not amazing and that's the only preventative/maintenance healing you get. As damage comes in you cast with the Paladin. Beacon of Light is really amazing in instances but it's just kind of "meh" so far in everything else. It guarantees that at least one of your DK's is getting constant heals but oftentimes the splash healing that goes to the Beacon is just wasted. Even though healing the Beacon generates Holy Power, both Word of Glory and Light of Dawn are weak heals I feel... At least compared to the Shaman counterparts.
Shamans on the other hand have the best of both worlds. Riptide is amazing--it's 10x better than Holy Shock to me. You can use a GCD while you're moving and you get decent heals while you're doing other things--Something the Paladin lacks. Earth Shield is also much better than Beacon imo~. It only heals when you "need" it in the sense that it's only using charges if you're actually taking damage as compared to Beacon where splash healing can often be 100% overhealing. Chain Heal is so much better than Light of Dawn, too. It's targeted and smart and there's no drop-off where the healing is less effective at a particular distance. It also synergizes well with Chain Heal.
I guess what turns me on to the Shaman so much is that with Riptide and Earth Shield you've got a lot of pro-active healing where you can plan for the future, so to speak. When you heal with the Paladin you're using GCD and cast time to fix health loss that has already happened--With the Shaman you can use GCD's and NO cast time (meaning while you're moving) to prevent current AND future loss of health. The difference to me is quite significant.
Survivability:
I think it's pretty obvious that Paladins win hands down on this issue. Straight survivability plus bubble makes it a moot point. There's nothing survivability wise that Shaman have over Paladins imo~.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo after all that...
Are the gains in healing worth the loss in survivability? Honestly I'm not sure what to say--Even if I did, I would wonder if I'm biased because I don't want to regrind all sorts of The Insane rep on my Shaman :) So, time for some intelligent discussion?
As said earlier in this thread I go with 4 frosts and 1 disc priest. I lead with a dk though and have my healer just on follow between my other dk's. That's the way I'm used to it, and a way that has worked very well for me so far (same with my shaman team). In reality I make hardly ever use of IWT in pvp. And next to that I do not click heal, I only button heal (I find that superior to click healing for my playing style).
On my 'main' account, I could go for druid (only lvl 60), priest/shaman or paladin (need to respec them as I've never healed with the shaman or paladin). As said I don't fancy leading with the healer though. So I also have a priest on account #3 and I could replace him with a resto shaman. What bothers me with tremor totem is that my toons often end up in different groups. If you pvp a lot it's a pita to /w the leader all the time and explain it.
Instead I find the fear ward + mass dispell way more attractive for this team. On top of that I have the shielding which mitigates even more damage. The ability to quickly fear any melee away that is on you just rocks.
The fact that my dk's are blood elfs for arcane torrent and that I like to have 5 toons of the same height/weight limits me to a priest or pally.
In the end any healer will work, it all depends on your playstyle and what you mainly do (bg's, rated bg's or arena).